1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of transmitting/receiving digital contents and an apparatus for receiving the digital contents.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
In the existing television (TV) system, contents created by a broadcasting station are transmitted via a wave propagation medium such as terrestrial, cable or satellite broadcasting such that viewers view a broadcasting signal transmitted via the wave propagation medium using a TV receiver. Hereinafter, the digital contents are the general term for substantial data or information which can be received through a recording medium having digital data recorded thereon and wired/wireless communication such as broadcasting, Internet or mobile communication and includes, for example, programs in a broadcasting service.
However, in the existing analog broadcasting, as a digital-based TV technology has been developed and commercialized, a variety of contents such as real-time broadcasting, contents on Demand (CoD), games or news have been provided to viewers using the Internet connected to individual homes, in addition to the existing wave propagation medium.
An example of provision of the contents using the Internet includes an Internet protocol TV (IPTV) system. The IPTV system indicates a service for providing an information service, moving-image contents and broadcasting to a television receiver using the super-high Internet.
In addition to various IPTV services, there is a need for a hybrid service which is a combination of digital broadcasting such as terrestrial/satellite/cable and the IPTV service.
Conventionally, in order to acquire event information of a broadcasting service received through an IP network, a method of extracting a service information table from the received transport stream (TS) was used. According to the conventional method, since the service event information should be included in a multicast stream of live media broadcasting, a large amount of service event information lays a burden on the use of the network.
In particular, in order to provide the hybrid service including a combination of various services, since information on the services or contents should be first known, the acquisition of the service event information using the conventional method places restrictions on the provision of the hybrid service.